I do hope that someday we find an alternative to this form of mining coal. As it is now though, I feel like fighting them is like fighting a very uphill battle. They strip the coal and then leave the big open spaces claiming that they will be great to use for industrial and commercial development. When in turn all we get are mostly pasture lands. There are places were the land is utilized for more than just grass land, but has proven to be have proven to be just as useful. There are places were industrial parks have been built on these lands, with factories being built because of huge tax breaks offered by the local governments. The factories do good for a couple years, but eventually they all shut down, leaving people jobless with nowhere to go once again. Then the commercial lands are all small strip malls, with the ever present Super Wal-Mart which is harmful to the local economies as the mines themselves, with the same big promises for more money and better lives, neither of which ever happen.

I went to college and got a good degree, hoping that it would be able to keep me from having to work on these types of mining jobs. I was actually hoping to not be involved with mining at all. For two years I’ve been helping to survey on a job very near my home, slowly watching them blast away the mountain I have so many childhood memories of. It has had a profound mental effect on me, the mountain was more important to me than I realized, and now it’s gone. As it happens all to often I have been laid off from that job. The sad reality of it is that I know for a fact I will not go back to that type of work, and for me to find another decent job I will have to move away from my family, friends, and the area in which I grew up. All because we have been fooled into believing that these mines were always our only form of income in this area, so we don’t even try to do anything else.